


A Day of Importance

by Chrissy24601



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, M/M, Post-Seine, and all the fluff, talk of birthdays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 10:37:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1223188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrissy24601/pseuds/Chrissy24601
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever since he can remember, Javert simply adds another tally to his age when the calendar changes to a new year. Valjean helps him see the importance of having a day to oneself. </p>
<p>Little piece of melancholic fluff for Mrs_Javert's birthday :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Day of Importance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mrs_javert](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrs_javert/gifts).



On a cold morning, Valjean sat at the kitchen table. His gaze was fixed on the glass circle he held in his hands. He turned it around and around, slowly as if it mesmerized him. Maybe it did. He only looked up briefly when clear, clipped footsteps sauntered into the kitchen and Javert sat down opposite of him. He waited for Javert to ask him about the object, or to scoff at its presence. But the tall man did neither. Valjean continued to turn the thick glass, reading the lines written on the paper caught between its halves both upside down and straight up.

“Why did you keep it?”

Valjean started a little. Javert had spoken softly, but still his ever-commanding voice filled the silent kitchen like an explosion.

“I wasn’t sure if you wanted to hold on to it.”

Javert shrugged. “Why would I? I cast it aside when I laid down my function.”

“No, when you laid down your life,” Valjean corrected him. Javert bowed his head and did not refute the truth. Time ticked away as the kitchen plunged once again into silence.

“I never knew you were so much younger than me,” said Valjean eventually.

“Does it matter?”

“Not really. It’s just that I have never given it any thought, and if I’d had to venture a guess, I would have expected you to be closer to my age.” He read the paper inside the glass badge again before putting it on the table between them. “Fifty-two.”

“Fifty-three soon.”

“Oh?” Valjean looked up with genuine interest. “When is you birthday?”

But Javert looked away without answering.

“Come on, with what is growing between us we should know these things about each other.”

“I cannot see why. I do not know your birthday, but that does not make me care less about you.”

Valjean caught the faint blush in the man’s face and smiled. Javert rarely said anything that so much as hinted at their uneasy yet increasingly intimate friendship, but when he did, Valjean felt his heart warm. As it did now.

“I know you care,” he whispered. “So you should know. October 7th.”

Javert looked at him with calm disbelief. “Most men forget their names in bagne, never mind the date of their birth. If they ever knew it to begin with. You mean to say you remember?”

“Of course not,” Valjean said. “I have no idea when I was born into this world, but after I was released from the bagne, Monseigneur Myriel saved my soul.”

Javert nodded impatiently. “So you told me.”

“That day I was reborn. And since then, I consider October 7th by birthday. Just as I choose December 25th for Cosette, because it was on Christmas Day that I took her away from the Thénardiers.”

“And your age?”

“I know my age because it was written on my passport when I was paroled. It said I was forty-six upon release, in September 1815. That makes me sixty-four now.”

Javert glanced at the table and traced a line in the wood with his finger. “I owe my age to the prison system’s documentation as well,” he said. “That is to say that the warden of the prison where my mother died – which was not the same one I was born in – estimated me to be twelve years old when he agreed to let me stay and train as a guard in exchange for doing chores. I suspect his estimate was not correct, but it matters little now. The number was only important for the police personnel files.”

“Then when is your birthday?”

“I have no idea.”

Valjean tried to catch his eye and failed. “Then what did it say in your personnel file?”

“Nothing.” Javert sighed, still tracing the same line. “It only mentioned a year, 1780, calculated back from what that warden decided on. At the start of every new year, I simply assume myself to have aged a year. So in four weeks, when this month ends, I will be fifty-three. It is efficient.”

“Perhaps, yes, but more than that it is impersonal, I would say.”

Now Javert looked at him. “Yes, _you_ would.”

“But surely there is a date that means more to you than a new sheet on the calendar?”

“I do not have your inclination to sentimentality, Valjean.”

“No, but you do have things that matter to you. And do not say ‘the law’ because if there is anything I have learned about you in the last few months that you have lived under my roof, it is that there is far more to you than your faith in clear rules of conduct.” A sparkle came to his eye. “That is it. You like clear, predictable rules that you can depend on. Something to fall back on when your world erupts in chaos.”

It was painful to see how the truth made Javert wince.

“I have seen you when you watch the stars at night,” Valjean said as gently as he could. “Do they give you peace?”

Javert did not seem to see him. “They never divert from their path through the night sky. And unlike the law and morality, they know no exceptions. They are truly reliable. Possibly the only things in the world that are.”

Valjean’s fingers abandoned the glass badge and reached across the table to touch Javert’s. “Then how about the one day of the year that the stars shine longest and brightest?”

“When is that?” There was a childishly innocent tone to Javert’s voice.

“Winter solstice, on December 21st. Barely three weeks from now.”

Valjean beamed, but Javert looked apprehensive. “And ten days before the new year. What difference does that make?”

“The difference is that you would mark the beginning and the end over every year of your life on a day that has significance to you, and not simply because it is convenient.” He took Javert’s hand in his. “You are not a convenience, Javert. You are important.”

Javert frowned, ill at ease. “I am just one man, Valjean.”

“So you are. One man, unique. And therefore important enough to deserve a special day to yourself.” He brought the hand he held to his lips and kissed it. “Please let me show you how important you are, especially to me.”

“On December 21st?”

Valjean smiled. “On December 21st, and on every day that comes before or after.”

 


End file.
